


Shackles

by Somecallmemichelle



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Comfort, Gen, Hints of Jaspis, Hopeful Ending, Hurt, Self-Reflection, hurt-comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 06:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17678021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somecallmemichelle/pseuds/Somecallmemichelle
Summary: Humans Lapis had been told, held the concept of personal freedom close to their hearts.To someone who has always been shackled in one way or form, that's hard to imagine...But it gets better.





	Shackles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neosaiyanangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neosaiyanangel/gifts).



Humans, Lapis had been told, had the concept of personal freedom, and they held it in deep regard.   
  
That made Lapis want to yell, though she knew herself better than that. At most she’d make a not so witty comment on the fact, her voice cracking as she did so.  _ Freedom _ , what that word meant to her and what it implied, and what it reminded her of.   
  
It was not day after day trapped in an artefact, a victim of circumstance, held by, and possessed, hoping, desperately aware of time passing. The good gems and the bad gems, and the everything in between not giving her a chance.   
  
Cracked. Useless. A lapis terraformed, but how could she terraform anything in her state? She hadn’t been able to mold glass, to escape her reflective prison, much less push water, or ice. It wasn’t about curiosity, which she had been told humans had another saying about, and it wasn’t about reaching Homeworld, her home.   
  
Later she had realised what a mistake that had been. She hadn’t even had the freedom to escape. Steven’s little human friend had said something poetic about a bird caged and singing, and Lapis had to admit it within herself, she hadn’t found the energy to sing until recently.

 

Then again, that wasn’t saying much. She barely had the energy to do much. She didn’t have the energy to stay, and she didn’t have the resolve to keep away. Her  _ freedom _ was the result of options she had taken, but then how could she call it freedom when she didn’t really commit?   
  
Commitment. She wanted to produce the organic saltwater that came out human’s eyes. As a gem, of course, she wasn’t designed to do so. But water was abundant, and the possibility was there, even more so when she was able to manipulate it. Humans had the curious facet of attributing emotion to the heart. And Lapis didn’t have a heart - she was purely light based, her form an illusion of the sight, but she felt. She felt so heavily sometimes she wished she didn’t have to. That she could just be a mindless little pawn, and that she could forget what she had gone through, and where her loyalty lied, and who she called friends.

 

Perhaps it wasn’t what a  _ good friend _ would do, she knew. Perhaps it wasn’t even asked of her, but it was still present as an invisible request, as a condition of their friendship. Steven wouldn’t put it in such terms, and neither would the Crystal Gems, but since when had she had freedom to decide?   
  
To call it too much, when she was effectively made to last eons, to say it broke her, despite the fact she was made to withstand the harshest of conditions - It might have been an overstatement. That was what she would have thought - once, a proud Lapis.   
  


That was not who she was anymore.   
  
Once she hacd been whole, and once she had been more than whole - it hadn’t been the nicest feeling - but to be attached to someone else, some other gem, some other being, in such an intimate fashion had filled her. It felt good to be felt, she supposed it was an integral part of being, not only limited to organical beings.   
  
But being whole and more than whole, and complete, and sharing what she generously called a body - even it was a mere reflection of light, as if an illusion playing tricks - had also forced her to accept something over and over. She had found herself with power -  _ true power _ , perhaps for the first time. It hadn’t been grand, it hadn’t been massive, but the power over the other gem, that was enough.   
  
She  _ liked _ to hurt her. That was her conclusion. And sure she did it to protect Steven, she did it to save the planet where her friends were located - humans, unlike gems couldn’t simply live any and everywhere. But that did not excuse the fact she enjoyed it.   
  
Lapis hadn’t had the freedom to choose how her existence would be. She had never rebelled and she had conformed. She had accepted and she had sighed, but she had never said no. It hurt, it pushed her beyond what she could possibly consider boundaries before shattering, even if no pressure was being exerted on her gem, and yet she kept going. To have someone who could take it, who by a whim of fate was forced to share all her pain, and even still be tormented further by Lapi’s wishes.   
  
That was just the thing she needed.

 

\---   
  
Some revelations came as a surprise to Lapis even now.   
  
She supposed it was why they were called revelations, and not just plain statements of fact, or obvious, but still she hadn’t thought herself a coward.   
  
She was simply broken - for how could she as a gem not be broken? Her body took form, yet her mind did not. She was too tired to even gasp.   
  
Her pledges of acceptance, her shaky grasp on what she had to do - not firm by any means, not even taking form in her mind as decisions until she was confronted with them, those were new.   
  
Authority - she supposed was the word to describe what had messed her up. What had led to long nights, even longer days, days turning to months turning to years, away. To call it away did so little to describe the nightmare it had been.   
  
Gems couldn’t sleep, and so nightmares weren’t really a thing she had experienced, but it was an apt descriptor from what she could tell. That Steven used that word to describe his interactions with the realm of scary thoughts, and things going wrong, made it feel even more so. 

 

Humans had evolved, and so had their language. Trapped below the sea she sometimes caught up muffled sounds, which she recognised as the way of communication between humans. Dialects, languages. She had crossed the seven seas, and that was no exaggeration - she had spent months and months under the darkness and the vague blotches of sun that hit the water when she - she supposed they - were  nearing the shore

 

Evolution sounded nice - to be changeable, to be malleable enough to, over a small period of time (well small for a gem) be able to improve themselves so much. Connie claimed that was not true evolution, not in a biological sense, but Lapis was no organical being. - It was good information to know - she assumed, knowledge was always important - but it was not like she would ever get to experience it organically.   
  
As a gem there was a bit of a clash between what she considered instantaneous - reforming her gem, for instance - and what she considered to be a long process. Not eternal, thankfully, but long.   
  
To call it long and not eternal was important to the gem because it meant there was a chance, a dash of hope far far in the horizon. It meant that things could change. It was a dash, no more than a mere trickle in the vast ocean of pain and regret, and sorrow that Lapis felt (and Lapis understood oceans well enough), but it was still present. Hope.   
  
Humans, she had been told held the concept of personal freedom in high regard. She had been told about them, but for some reason that stuck out in her mind. In between doubt, hate, power trips and feelings - she took that to mean that she would one day be free.   
  
She might think herself free of most of what had shackled her - glass, obligations, orders - but she still had that last chain to break. There was a thing Peridot had once told her, in between the contact she so often repeated with Steven, one she had learned to call a hug. Things were different. And that was good!   
  
Because what was change if not the prelude to freedom?   
  


  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what it is exactly about this fanfic, but I must admit I am not too happy with it, I still think execution could have been better.
> 
> Nevertheless I'm posting it. If you enjoyed it why not leave a comment? Help alleviate some of my fears!


End file.
